Invent interesting metaphors and similies for women's romantic novels.

I realize that I am basically talking to myself here, but today was the day I went back to the thrift store that had #79 of the Encyclopedia of the Human Body and Mind to see if there was anything else there that inspired me. I went all around the books section, found a great book with huge pictures of baby animals, and then I saw the OTHER magazine rack with like 20 more installments of the encyclopedia. I bought them all, total expenditure $7. I anticipate many more hours of pointless typing, cutting, and glueing in my future.

(I put the baby animal picture book back because I didn't want to carry it home on the ~ 2 mi walk in the snow) The end.

These are mad awesome.

^^ otm

Yes. I wish I was wealthy enough to offer you a book deal LL, I really do. I've said it before and at the risk of tiring you doing so again: you need to get these out there. In whatever shape or form. Spectacular.

Webmailed u!

I really appreciate the support. This thread will be updated with any future developments, of which there is possibly one currently in the works. If that woman ever writes back?!

Do I know anyone in Chicago who would loan me a fog machine?

Webmailed you just now with my email address, because webmail on here doesn't reach me (old address)

That woman knows you are waiting to hear from her and is going to email you! She said she answers emails on Sunday.

Alright then -- taking care of the situation. I have told enough people about this that I would be officially embarrassed if I didn't make it happen, so I will do the necessary legwork and hopefully find a fog machine. The rest is ready to go.

Also

--> I think I will take requests so if you have a romantic situation that you would like to be immortalized using official romance language and images from the marshall cavendish encyclopedia of the human body and mind, let me know. I can fix it up 4 u.

Update:

* I removed the images from view temporarily
* I did this because I am about to use them and I want to fix the ones that didn't scan properly
* How am I using them? For better or worse, I have entered (don't laugh) a contest that involves a reading and I plan to project the images while I read the text
* This takes place in one week
* I have been practicing, and I recorded the first half of it (just audio, that's all I'm worried about really)

So excited to attend this contest.

That is so cool! I'm sure you'll knock their socks off.

yaaaaaaay awesome, Amanda! wish i could come.

Thanks guys! I am pretty excited, trying not to get my hopes up and be cool. (This is hard for me since I always get my hopes up and am never cool)

I made another few little ones just for fun and framed them, but I don't really have any purpose for them yet. I guess I'll wait until some birthdays roll around?

Seriously I would have never even considered showing these to anyone unless someone had encouraged me, so thanks for real.

My birthday is in November. I am just saying.

Wow I seem to have missed a whole lot between the sandbox + now but this is seriously awesome + I'm so excited for you! Crossing fingers, but I know you won't need luck bcuz yr work will blow everyone away. This is great!

Did you arrange for a smoke machine? Or for some to video the performance for us ilxors? :)

Excited for this!

I have nixed the smoke machine as (1) I couldn't find one and (2) even if I did, it might obscure the images from being projected and (3) it has been suggested that that would be "too much" :(

If someone is going to record it, I would rather not know until it's over. I will say that it sounds better read out loud than I ever expected it to.

You will be great, you know it. My birthday's a week tomorrrow. Just sayin'. :D

Oh! Really?! I should have been able to figure that out from our birthday conversation the other night, but it's going on the calendar. I hope you like late birthday presents!

I hope you like late birthday presents!

That should clarify things.

Em -- I sent you a message.

I have been kind of a maniac with these again. I made a couple of little ones and put them in a frame, only one of them is facing the back because it's the thought behind the thought. You could also just reverse them if you want.

This is the outside
http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7146/6829780917_58935872dd_z.jpg

I also made a Valentine!

Well, the people failed to recognize my genius; if you want to win a contest judged by invisible rules, go with comedy instead of high concept. STILL, there was definitely some competition, and I did well.

Maybe my screen wasn't big enough. Next time!

Your genius, nevertheless, is fully recognized and intact here at lix. That muscular one is swellerrific!

Thanks! Tomorrow I'll post my Valentine. It's a little different, but same general feel.

What's more romantic than kissing a corpse? Happy Valentine's Day, ILX! <3 u.
http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7034/6829783589_40a29fd4e1_b.jpg

First three stanzas (minus the last line) are from the version of "Fair Margaret and Lady William" which had been "communicated to Percy by the Dean of Derry, as written down by memory by his mother, Mrs. Bernard." (From Vol 2 of the 5 volume The English and Scottish Popular Ballads" set, p. 201. I used the last line from the version Shirley Collins sang on The Power of the True Love Knot why because I felt like it)

Ah! I knew I knew those words. Would've been the Shirley Collins, yes.

LL this stuff is so so awesome I wish I could kickstart you an art prize of yr own!

Oh, it's more than enough that anyone cares.

These really knock me out. Sorry the judges were a bunch of ninnys.

Eh, it was just a good deadline/excuse to get excited about something/costume opportunity.
I'm not quite sure how to proceed, but I think I'll just keep making them and if the opportunity to read them aloud presents itself, I will do it.

I do have 5 volumes of ballads and no shortage of other things to cut up and glue together, that's for sure.

Not exactly related, but I threw this together from an ancient ESL book called Time and Space: A Reader. It's pretty much a goldmine, but it's all b/w. (image sorta nsfw but honestly, it's a drawing and not really very explicit at that)

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7204/6873874317_14a4d22934_z.jpg

Do these images still exist anywhere? I knew you were reading at the Whistler, but I had no idea about any of this until just now!

Yeah, they're on flickr. I'll email you a link.

Merci.

They should also be linked above but not to the set.

Amanda's project + this piece make me feel like i should really be reading romance novels

Simone de Beauvoir wrote in The Second Sex (1949) "[Woman] is defined and differentiated with reference to man and not he with reference to her; she is the incidental, the inessential as opposed to the essential. He is the Subject, he is the Absolute — she is the Other."

In romance fiction this formula is reversed, as scholar and former Mills & Boon editor jay Dixon (who spells her name with a lower-case "j") observes in her book The Romantic Fiction of Mills & Boon 1909-1995. Woman is the Subject, man the Other.

That is indeed true if the Romance Writer's Phrase Book is any indication!! I remain really disappointed in the overwhelming negativity of the book too. The last line in my "novel" is also the last line in the book --
"her mind was filled with sour thoughts."

I mean, think about that.

I also had a difficult time getting her to do anything that was not a reaction to what he was doing.

Tangentially, my mom attends a lot of "writer's conferences" at which she sees ALL kinds of weirdos (self-help, self-published romance writers, memoirists, etc) and she said that by far, the most depressing scene was in front of the romance writers' booth. She described it as "grim."

All of this just makes me more interested in it, naturally.

haha. maria bustillos recommends mills & boon and harlequin joints published between the late '30s and 1980 fwiw

Ive surely posted this romanticalz novel cover I made once, on here before right?

http://www.memorygongs.com/cover_3redone.jpg

This sort of reminds me of what La Lech has been up to: http://heroofswitzerland.blogspot.com/2012/01/judo-casebook.html

Interesting! Totally. I made a few more. I guess I could put them up here?

This one is my favorite of the newer ones that are not part of the original Ch. 1-12. (I have no idea what to call this btw -- I don't speak art language beyond very rudimentary basics -- I know what an installation is. Kind of.)
http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7058/6777765246_262502353a_b.jpg

Yes please! I prefer your stuff, as it's more creative, but I quite like the judo strips... kind of imbues a lot of the trite problem page writing with more pathos, maybe?

xpost

Some of those are really odd... are they still from the same book? I don't even know what "foundation-training in the iron game" is meant to mean.

I called it "It may also radiate"

The words are from Jean Kent's other phrasebook, this one,
The Professional Writer's Phrase Book

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51Pk-ZdE9GL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

I wish I could pretend to know how to talk about this stuff, but I really don't. I never took any art classes beyond photography and pottery, which I toooootally bungled.

And the new phrase book is just like nonstop utter nonsense -- there are these "commercial phrases" used in sales, lots more sex, but a little more graphic and with fewer nipples this time (?) and TONS OF PIZZAZZ! (not really)

I mean, "banged his walker noisily across the room" <--- where exactly are you going to use this phrase? is that really an all-purpose phrase?